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No Takers for BTs Commercial Superfast Broadband Cable Duct Access Product

Posted: 25th Feb, 2012 By: MarkJ
ofcom fibre optic broadband uk cable duct sharingbt openreach uk fttc broadbandAfter over three months BTOpenreach, which manages access to BT Group's national UK telecoms infrastructure, still has no firm takers for its commercial Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product. The PIA service allows rival ISPs the ability to access BT's underground cable ducts and telegraph poles for the rollout of their own fibre optic ( FTTP ) broadband networks.

Less than a handful of ISPs and telecoms firms, including Sky Broadband (BSkyB), Fujitsu and Call Flow Solutions, have been conducting trials of the PIA service in the Wirral (North West England) but so far none have opted to take the product commercially.

BT Openreach's CEO, Liv Garfield, said in November 2011:

"We’ve pulled out all the stops to make sure our products fit the needs of our customers, so I have been delighted by the positive feedback we’ve had from Fujitsu UK and others. Pole and duct access will enable CPs to deliver superfast broadband speeds in areas outside the existing planned commercial footprint, so we felt it was important to launch the products as soon as possible."

Last year BT claimed that Fujitsu was its "furthest-advanced participant" in the trials (here). But Fujitsu's often questioned plans for a 1Gbps capable broadband network, which would aim to reach 5 Million UK homes in rural areas via PIA by 2016, has faced repeated setbacks (here).

In recent months Fujitsu has withdrawn from possible tenders in both Scotland's Highlands & Islands region (Fujitsu: "the sums simply did not stack up") and Wales (Fujitsu: "the risk levels within the Welsh Government contract terms were too high"). Meanwhile neither Sky nor Call Flow has made any significant efforts to go beyond their respective trials.

BT told IT Pro yesterday that it would "continue to work closely with interested communications providers", although some of the big ISPs state that PIA "still remains expensive and difficult to use in practice," said TalkTalk (note: they have no plans to use PIA). Meanwhile Fujitsu claims that it does intend to use PIA, but only "subject to satisfactory interim and final product definitions".

Nearly all of the alternative non-BT solutions would require some degree of funding from the government's Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office. Most local councils look set to have their related "draft" Local Broadband Plans (LBP) approved (details) by the governments deadline (end of February 2012) and final plans are then expected to be agreed by the end of April 2012. An official update on this is expected within the next two weeks.

At this stage most of the government's funding confirmations and or related contract awards have yet to be resolved. Some operators will naturally be waiting for this to happen, although the early indications from Wales and Scotland don't bode well for rival operators (i.e. non-BT).
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